Telecommunication systems provide mobile voice communication capability along with mobile messaging including Short Message Service (SMS), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) among others. The USSD is a mobile telecommunication signaling (common channel) data bearer or protocol that allows interactive (two-way) transmission of information between an USSD enabled User Equipment (UE), also often technically referred to as Mobile Station (MS), such as mobile phone or tablet, and applications/services hosted by a telecommunication Operator or service partners in a real time “connection oriented” manner USSD was originally developed for GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), and also incorporated into its successor Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS) which supports various air interface standards including Time Division—Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA), and Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access. The USSD is also supported on the 4th Generation telecommunication standard—Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Further, improved solutions allow USSD based messaging options over common channel in other non-GSM mobile networks.
USSD is commonly used by prepaid GSM cellular phones users to query the available airtime balance. However, albeit it is a low bandwidth protocol, it can be used to deliver and transmit any other alphanumeric data of up to 182 characters per message payload in a series of two-way query and response communication. The USSD has also been used within telecommunication systems for transporting call control management information within a wireless network. Also, it has been employed for classic services such as using the multi delimited USSD codes for implementing subscriber defined usage limits right from a mobile terminal, while sending both Password and Usage limit appended to a Service Code in one USSD dial request.
Further, almost all GSM/GPRS/WCDMA/LTE User Equipment (UE) and mobile devices available on the market today, including the most basic feature phones, have the required capabilities to support the USSD-based services, thereby making services provided over this channel accessible to a larger audience than mobile Internet-enabled devices. This is significantly important in regions where Internet data connectivity is unavailable, unstable or expensive.
Moreover, services delivered on the USSD channel are accessible to users even when out of their home network; for example, when roaming on another Telecom network in local or foreign country as provided in the technical GSM 02.90 (ETSI TS 100 625, V7.0.0) specification that when a serving network receives such a message from a visiting subscriber, it shall pass the USSD message directly to the HPLMN, further expanding the availability of services offered on this channel. It is also possible to utilize this service when the mobile device/station MS is being used for a call or out of call.
The simplicity of access, and simplicity of the content and services deployed over this channel, make it well suited and efficient for solutions aiming to deliver simple fast access to information, such as service enquiries, subscriptions opt-in/opt-out, data collection, polling, consenting, two-way interaction services, collaboration, and the likes in a real-time bidirectional fashion. Moreover, with the advancements in Micro-Electro-Mechanical (MEM) and sensory devices powering the Internet of things (IoT), the USSD channel is well suited for providing reliable connectivity for this fast growing application.
Several efforts have been made to leverage the high potentials of the USSD for effective service delivery. Some solutions provide a smarter user-end client application to consume USSD-based services, with embedded decoder facility to interpret received messages and convert them to structured languages for rich display by the client.
However, access codes, often referred to as service codes or shortcodes (likeable to telephone numbers in voice calls or IP Addresses in the Internet space) for USSD in telecommunication networks are limited, often allocated or assigned to telecommunication operators and licensed Telecom Value Added Service providers by regulatory bodies, and are as such considered and treated as scarce resources. With the increasing need for easy and cheaper access to connectivity for human and sensor devices, breaking the barrier of access code limitations for potent telecommunication protocols/technologies, such as USSD and SMS, similar to how the IP addressing schemes, simplified and democratized the Internet connectivity, will be of a great importance, especially where these capabilities are present, underutilized or unused, for consumers and operators alike.
In addition to the limited number of access codes, the typical processes, systems and methods of allocating or assigning access codes to intending services/applications, and deploying the associated application services are mostly clumsy, not flexible, point-to-point, and technically involving, thus preventing commercial-scale deployment and adoption of this versatile communication channel. A typical timeline for code allocation, development and deployment of USSD based services in a mobile operator environment ranges from 12 weeks to several months.
Accordingly, some methods employ other channels (SMS, MMS, Voice calls, Long Number calling, data calls, GPRS, WAP, IVR, Emails etc) as initiation mechanism for USSD services, where a dedicated Destination Terminal (DT) that receives such calls act as intermediaries for initiating a callback-like USSD Push to the initiating Terminal to begin the transaction. Similarly, voice channel or text may be used as access entry point or initiator for USSD based services and applications, introducing a Voice or Call handling terminal device (DT) to mediate between the voice network and the common (signaling) channel USSD gateway. The method requires prospective service owners to work with the telecommunication operator for the setup, configuration and deployment of the DT terminals in network or as software on handsets, integration into the Gateway (GTW) node and configuration of the GTW for every application. These approaches are time-consuming, demanding, complex and inhibiting web-scale deployment of services over the USSD channel.
Therefore, there is a need for improved methods, apparatus and devices to provide improved methods and system to enable dynamic search and reservation of access codes, and automated deployment and delivery of common channel based services on telecommunication networks, with support for easy adoption, web scale load handling to enable large commercial-scale service delivery on the low bandwidth channels, such as the USSD.